Road Trip

Last weekend most of our group here went on a three-day two-night road trip to visit some of the more famous areas of Guatemala. I'll try to give a good breakdown of the trip. We started at 4am Friday morning when we left Antigua. We ate breakfast on the way and our first real stop was Castillo San Felipe on Rio Dulce.

The castle is a fort that was built by the Spanish in an effort to stop pirate raids from the Caribbean. It reminded me a bit of Charleston, SC and Forts Sumter and Moultrie. While we were there we also got to swim in the Rio Dulce and have a picnic lunch. The next stop after that was Flores for dinner. Flores is an island in a lake in northern Guatemala. It's quite tranquil and relaxing as it has not yet developed as a tourist area as much as some of the other places we visited. We had a very nice dinner with a great view of the water.

Our final stop for the night, after about 12 hours of driving, was the hotel. The hotel was quite nice and on the water as well. There wasn't too much time to enjoy it though, as we woke up at 5am the next morning to go visit Tikal.

Tikal was at one time a capital of the Mayan civilization and is still one of the most famous ruins in the world. I won't bore everyone with the history, but there's just nothing like the view over the forest canopy from the top of a 176ft ancient temple. And because we got there so early in the morning we were able to eat a picnic breakfast there and have the park largely to ourselves. The most amazing part of the park is the sheer amount of work it must have taken to construct the complex. The temple areas themselves are on raised foundations some 20-40ft high. Imagine an artificially constructed hill that has been leveled to provide a flat area for building construction. But after all the work to create the complexes, they were nearly completely covered when the Spanish arrived. This is because the buildings were all constructed out of limestone. Limestone contains the right conditions for for plants to grow on it...and so after only hundreds of years a temple will be a rather oddly-placed mound in the middle of the jungle. So when the Spanish arrived all they could find of this amazing sight was the very tops o a few temples. There are still hundreds of unexcavated mounds today.

After leaving Tikal that morning we headed back down to the hotel for a quick swim and then lunch. The next stop was Rio Dulce with our ultimate destination being Livingston. Livingston is a bit abnormal in Guatemala in that it's about the only place with black people. It's an Afro-caribbean community with a culture and language all its own. However despite not being an island it is only accessible by boat from Rio Dulce. I've not yet found an adequate explanation of why but there are no roads that run to Livingston from the rest of Guatemala. And so to get there we took a very fast 15-person speed boat at night for about an hour. Needless to say this would not be legal in the States, but apparently they feel it is pretty safe as long as the driver has a lookout in the front with a flashlight to spot the shore or obstructions in the water.

We arrived safely at an eco-lodge with thatched roofs, mosquito nets, and barely running water. It turns out we had no need of the mostquito nets but we did have a mouse running around in the rafters all night.

Dinner was a short boat ride away in Livingston itself. We had a nice dinner and walked down to the Caribbean. The next day we took the boat to a place called 7 Altares. This is a series of natural waterfalls which in some places create pools deep enough to dive and swim in. The biggest one (and due to lack of rain the only one currently deep enough) was about 12 meters deep. After leaving there we took the boat back to collect our bags, then returned again by boat (thankfully in daylight this time), and started the drive home by van. All in all it was a great trip and extremely cheap for all the things we did. All in all it cost less than $300US for transportation, accomodation, food, and all the various activities.